Page:Criticism and Beauty.djvu/19

Rh sympathetic reader, though he need not admire, can scarcely fail to understand the author criticized, the ends he aimed at, the models that swayed him, the conventions within which he worked, the nature of the successes which it was his fortune to achieve.

Of criticism like this we cannot have too much. Yet it has its difficulties; or rather it suggests difficulties which it scarcely attempts to solve. For its aesthetic judgements are, in spite of appearances, for the most part immediate and, so to speak, intuitive. 'Lo, here I!' 'Lo, there!' 'This is good!' 'That is less good!' 'What subtle charm in this stanza!' 'What masterly orchestration in that symphony!' 'What admirable realism!' 'What delicate fancy!' The critic tells you what he likes or dislikes. He may even seem to tell you why. But the 'why' is rarely more than a statement of personal preferences. For these preferences he may quote authority. He may classify them. He may frame general propositions about them, which have all the air of embodying critical principles on which particular aesthetic judgements may securely rest. But, in fact, these general propositions only summarize a multitude of separate valuations of aesthetic merit, each of which is either self-sustaining, or is worthless.